On Track
by thousanth
Summary: Some people choose to believe that they have choices; Vincent Valentine has no such illusions. Set post-FFVII.


This is a companion piece to "Chase The Wind" - though it's set some time before it.

For the prompt "FFVII – Vincent, character study – he wants to live up to their expectations."

* * *

He has a choice then, there at the end. Go back to her, to the past that will not let him go, or carry on in the world at their side, fighting the good fight in selfless magnanimity. A choice like that to a man like him is no choice at all.

I am not like you, he says, when he chooses to speak at all. Even silent they read his meaning clearly enough. Barret doesn't care, never liked him anyway, and is glad to see the back of the strange, tall, whip of a man with demons in his head and the scent of blood and roses all around him. Vincent has never liked Barret either, so it works out in the end.

Tifa smiles with that sad curve of her lips that's been carrying her onwards for ten years now, and Yuffie says something about fighting in Wutai and how he could help, but she's so easily distracted it's the matter of a moment to slip away. He doesn't want the stink of gun smoke and materia any more, or the crack of spells and bullets all around. The sound of war makes the devil in him stir and it's hard enough to keep him under control at the best of times.

Aerith is dead and Cait Sith's a duplicitous little creep that Vincent never had time for anyway. These people have too much history intertwining with his own, poisonous vines with thorns that prick every time he moves too fast. It makes the choice easier really, no matter how he likes to think there could be another way. Cloud is already running, Vincent can see it in his eyes and the tilt of his head as he looks to the horizon. What he sees no-one really wants to know. Vincent understands, feels that same pull too, and resists it only because he is contrary and needs to know that he can.

And so he sits for a while on the dusty porch of Seventh Heaven and listens to Tifa sorting glasses behind the bar. Marlene plays with her ragdoll on his lap and Nanaki curls at his feet, and for a while Vincent pretends that this is all there is, and all he needs. There in the warmth of the afternoon sun, he thinks of Cid Highwind, and the look the man gave him before he left. Cid could have been a friend, in another life perhaps.

There are so many things Vincent Valentine _could_ do. Help Tifa with the bar; help Reeve run the Company; work with Cid to patch up Rocket Town. None them will work, and he knows it. What will he do in a bar save scare off the patrons? The thought of helping Reeve put back together the company that ruined him makes him sick with anger inside. Cid? Cid...he could play the game of good citizen with him for a little while – mend fences, drive off monsters, bring tea to the man that's building miracle machines that Vincent can barely comprehend. What lives those would be.

He knows what the others expect him to do. To help, to settle down, to find his place in this new world. To move on, just as they have done. But they are not him and they don't know what it is to live with the devil in their heads. Except for Cloud perhaps, but Cloud will never be fixed again, and Vincent doesn't understand why anyone would choose to think otherwise. Some of them are broken in ways that cannot be repaired, not like Cid's flying machines, or Barret's guns. Some of them have expectations written into them by unbreakable bonds of DNA and magical brands that scar their souls.

In another life, Vincent Valentine could have been there for them. He could have lived up to their expectations, and their kind, needy selves. He wants to think that somewhere out there in the cracked reflection of the universe, there is another world where that possibility is not mere fantasy. But this is his reality, this is his story and so he does not tell them that it's simply not possible for him no matter what he might want, because at the end of it all, there's nothing left to say.

"Where are you going?" Marlene asks him when he sets her down and rises from his chair.

"For a walk," Vincent replies, looking down at her sweet, knowing face.

"Take your phone," she says, and her eyes are serious and full of faux-adult concern.

He nods, shows her the slender black device, and then slips it into his pocket. Tifa's voice calls from inside, telling her to come help with the clearing up. With a solemn nod, the child turns and is gone, back into the shady depths of the bar.

"Are you coming?" Vincent says, looking down the street at the slow passing of foot traffic.

"Not today," Nanaki replies, without raising his head from his paws. "Maybe another day."

Vincent looks down at him and holds his gaze for a moment, before he nods and walks away. Nanaki watches him stalk down the street, his cloak pulled tight around his thin shoulders, until he vanishes into the shadows of a side alley and is lost from sight. For a long time after the scent of blood and roses lingers, until finally that too fades, and Nanaki is left alone to doze in the last of the afternoon sun.


End file.
